Search Results for: employee

HR and Facilities Management bodies to collaborate on future of workplace

by • Facilities management, News, Workplace

Facilities managementOne of the main themes at the ThinkFM conference yesterday was the acknowledgement that facilities management and HR need to break down the silos that often exist between the two disciplines. This was the message of Chris Kane, CEO of BBC Commercial Properties, who explained that the British Institute of Facilities Management will be collaborating with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development on a number of projects to investigate how both communities of professionals are evolving and adapting to the changing workplace. It marked the end of a conference which began the day with a talk by Peter Cheese, the CEO of the CIPD, who remarked that both professions were in the business of getting the most of people in the working environment and why it is vital that those tasked with managing these key resources within organisations need to work together to maximise the value of its workforce. (more…)

Spending on office furniture becomes a US political football

by • Comment, Furniture, Public Sector, Workplace design

Uncle Sam MoneyWe’ve mentioned this before but when it comes to riling those who see public sector spending as inherently wasteful, nothing gets their backs up quite so much as the buying of lightbulbs and office furniture. You can come up with your own theories on why that might be (and I hope you do), but it’s been proved yet again as Fox News and other right wing commentators and media in the US have risen up in moral indignation at the news that the Internal Revenue Service has spent $96.5 million on office furniture and refurbishment during the last five years of the Obama administration. Now of course, this is just the touchstone for griping about government spending in general and Barack Obama in particular, but the US is clearly not alone in having an issue with office furniture purchases and you have to wonder exactly why this is.

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Workplace design, Facebook likes and the need of companies to be your friend

by • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Facebook_like_thumbCompanies put an awful lot of time and money into getting people to like them on social media these days. While it would be easy to see the like button on Facebook as the primary conduit for this corporate neediness, but it cuts across many aspects of the ways in which companies work, including their relationships with employees and the ways in which they develop new forms of workplace design and management. This is most evident in the tech palaces which are aimed at the same digital natives that firms habitually target with their online marketing, but the need to make customers and employees friends of the business cuts across a wide range of sectors. The workplace is yet another channel of communicating chumminess, and it offers many of the same challenges as social media.

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Wellness counts. Third of staff would consider leaving if they didn’t feel cared for

by • News, Workplace

Nearly third of staff would consider leaving if wellness not encouragedMeasuring the impact of wellness initiatives at work is far from being an exact science. An examination of sickness absence figures for example, must take into account many variables; from the state of health of employees before the outset of a wellbeing programme, to the reasons behind each individual’s days off sick after a health programme has been put in place.  There is though, a growing body of evidence that employers that bother to provide their workers with the tools to improve their level of health and wellbeing do benefit from a more engaged and more productive workforce. The latest bit of research by Unum and ICM finds that employees who feel that they have good workplace wellbeing are 27 per cent more likely to stay with their employer for over five years than those employees who feel they have only adequate or poor provision. (more…)

Flexible working benefits are undermined by short sighted employers

by • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

Flexible work

There has been a growing perception that flexible working practices are now commonplace in the workplace. However a recent report from Working Families, a charity set up to help working parents and carers find a balance between their responsibilities at work and at home, suggests this is a myth. Their report reflects growing concerns based on experiences and queries from their helpline that employers are in fact, becoming more rigid. The report suggests that working parents are coming under increasing pressure to give up their flexible working arrangements. It highlights “a growing number of callers to the helpline reporting the family-friendly working pattern they have had in place for years being changed or withdrawn virtually overnight, with no opportunity for them to express their views”. Ironically, despite the Government’s championing of flexible working it seems the imposition of employment tribunal claim fees could be behind the backlash. (more…)

Employers fail to monitor wellbeing and mental health alongside staff engagement

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Mental ill health still not being addressedMonitoring of employee engagement and wellbeing by FTSE 100 companies improved over the past year, but organisations are failing to measure or address the psychological health of employees. The latest Business in the Community (BITC) Workwell FTSE 100 benchmark showed an increase in the average company scores from 21 per cent to 25 per cent while reporting across the five identified areas of BITC’s Workwell Model; Better Work, Better Relationships, Better Specialist Support, Better Physical and Psychological Health and Working Well increased from 53 to 63. 86 per cent of companies now report on four or five of these themes. But despite this, there was almost no evidence that psychological health is being measured or addressed, and the provision of mental health support continues to be a low scoring area (11%). (more…)

Green buildings may not enhance job satisfaction and performance, claims study

by • Architecture, Environment, Workplace, Workplace design

UK Green Building Council sets out future plans for sustainable futureIn March a report from the British Council for Offices appeared to show that people are happier and more productive when working in green buildings. But the idea that staff find greater job satisfaction when they work in environmentally friendly surroundings is challenged by a new study from researchers at the University of Nottingham and the Centre for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. It found that, contrary to other research, people working in LEED certified buildings appear no more satisfied with the quality of their interior design and fit-out and may enjoy no more overall level of job satisfaction than those working in less green buildings. The research was carried out by Stefano Schiavon at Berkeley and Sergio Altomonte of the University of Nottingham and published in the April edition of Building and Environment.

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US employers hold very mixed views on flexible working, claims report

by • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Glued to the desk

It’s not just companies in the UK who appear to have mixed and sometimes contradictory views on the principles of flexible working. A new study from the US based Families and Work Institute in partnership with the Society for Human Resource Management has found that while more and more firms are open to the idea of working from home for permanent employees, other forms of flexible working such as job sharing, career breaks or sabbaticals to deal with personal and family issues. The 2014 National Study of Employers found that two-thirds (67 percent) of US organisations now allow employees to work from home at least some of the time, up from 50 per cent in 2008. In addition, 41 per cent of firms let workers decide their own working hours, compared to 32 per cent in 2008. However there are falls in the proportion of employers willing to let staff work flexibly in other ways.

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Wearable technology will improve productivity and job satisfaction, claims report

by • News, Technology, Workplace

Google_Glass_Explorer_EditionIt’s remains a cause of a great deal of rancour in workplaces and public spaces around the world but new research from Goldsmiths, University of London claims that wearable technology can boost employee productivity by over 8 percent and job satisfaction by around 3.5 percent. The study was carried out as part of the University’s Human Cloud at Work (HCAW) programme and was designed to explore the effects of wearable technologies such as Google Glass in the workplace and on employee wellbeing, productivity and job satisfaction. HCAW is a two-year collaborative project between the Institute of Management Studies and cloud specialist Rackspace to investigate how cloud-enabled wearable devices will impact on individuals and businesses.

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Ska rating is shaping the future of sustainable office design

by • Company news, Environment, Insight promotion

t-cmg-01-sideWe all know the ways in which we can ‘do our bit’ at home – turn off the lights when you leave a room, only boil as much water as you need, recycle as much as you can. At work however, it can be all too easy to forget and ignore the impact we have on our environment. Intelligent and inspired office design can not only increase productivity and employee wellbeing, but also be sustainable and provide financial benefits as a result. Although there were established tools for assessing the environmental impact of whole buildings, such as BREEAM and LEED, the certification of fit-outs, especially on existing buildings, had previously been unsatisfactory. To address this, the Ska Rating method was developed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

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Flexible working practices could help disabled people stay in work, claims report

by • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

A million futuresAccording to a new report from one of the UK’s leading disability charities, one of the main obstacles for disabled people when it comes to finding and remaining in work is a lack of flexible working opportunities. Nearly half of the 700 respondents to a survey carried out by Scope and published yesterday in a new report called ‘A Million Futures’ claimed that flexible working could have helped them to stay in work. The report claims that last year alone some 220,000 more disabled employees left work than found a new job, many of them because they were not allowed to work in ways that would help them to manage significant life changes related to their disability and work around their treatment and meet other demands of their lives. Only around a third felt they had been offered the flexibility they needed.

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Managing stress is employers’ number one health and wellbeing priority

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Managing stress is employers' number 1 wellbeing priorityBeing ‘stressed’ can describe a whole range of conditions; from having a particularly demanding working day to feeling cripplingly anxious and depressed. Although there are still an awful lot of managers out there who dismiss the term as a shirker’s excuse, it’s a condition that must be taken seriously. Stress accounts for a massive 40 per cent of all workplace absences, but it is also the underlying cause of many other conditions that lead to staff staying off work. This is why the 40 per cent of employers that now routinely record the secondary cause of absence alongside the primary stated reason for long-term sick leave are realising the huge impact mental health plays from the outset. It’s behind the growing recognition on the need for early intervention strategies to help support people to manage these conditions and encourage them to maintain a work/life balance. (more…)

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